Author: jimgclarke

Just a brief plug for this book which is authored by one of the investigators on the Ponying the Slovos project. Though it doesn't directly address issues of invented languages, as the first text on Anthony Burgess's fiction in a generation, it may well be of interest to those who enjoy and study his work.

Here is the second article published by the Parallel Translation Corpus team. In it, we seek to linguistically define Nadsat so as better to examine how its functions, effects, and construction vary across translations, which is the subject of the first article published by the team, and of future articles in planning. The Language…

This article originally appeared in Babel magazine issue 19: http://www.babelzine.com/ LIVES IN LANGUAGE Jim Clarke examines the linguistic legacy of novelist, composer and amateur philologist Anthony Burgess on the centenary of his birth. Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) It is little surprise that Anthony Burgess is today best known for a novella which is written…

As stated in the previous post, we have been attempting to establish what happens when an invented art language is translated, and what that can tell us about translation strategies. But to do that, it is important firstly to define what we mean by invented art language. The one we chose is not a fully-fledged…

Nadsat is, of course, the invented language which forms the heart and identity of Anthony Burgess's famous novella, A Clockwork Orange. It is also the object of study of the team of linguists and literary historians behind this blog. For the past two years, we have been examining Nadsat with the intention of working out what…

It is with a heavy heart that we note the death of Richard Adams, author of the seminal Watership Down, with its wonderful act of imagination, the invention of a Lapine language. As one critic noted, Watership Down "is much more like A Clockwork Orange: a book so confidently lodged in an alternative universe with…

We were consulted today by BBC's 'The One Show', the midday magazine programme, which will be doing a slot on invented languages on tomorrow's show. This relates to the release of the new 'BFG' movie, based on the book by Roald Dahl, in which the titular friendly giant speaks in his own language, 'Gobblefunk', entirely…

We'll be speaking about the Ponying the Slovos conference, and our plans for the future tomorrow at Coventry University at 12.25pm in the Engineering building, EC1-03. You'll need to register to attend at https://cuacdev.wordpress.com/portfolio/cucbf/, or follow the hashtag at #CUcbf. Once the presentation is over, it should be available on the Coventry University website in…

We just spent ten minutes getting interviewed in Klingon, Elvish and Nadsat on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire by afternoon show presenter Brody Swain. Lots of fun. OK, the iPlayer link is now up. The slot begins at 2.11 and continues for about 11 minutes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p03l4xrd